McConnell believes joining the euro is inevitable

Published on Thursday 13 July 2006 12:29

JACK McConnell has said it is inevitable Britain will eventually join the single European currency.

Appearing at a question-and-answer session at Edinburgh's Stevenson College, the First Minister said: "I personally don't have a problem with the euro as a currency for Scotland and the UK.

"I can remember the days when there were lots of different European currencies and that was not necessarily healthy."

He said the existence of major trading blocks like India, China, Russia and South America made it necessary for Europe to have a single currency and a single market to compete.

"A small place like Scotland or Britain or Sweden is not going to be able to do that. In the long term, I don't have a problem with Britain being part of the euro."

Mr McConnell also called for primary school children to be taught foreign languages, including Mandarin Chinese.

He said Scotland had a poor record on language skills, but there had been pilot studies teaching French to five and six year-olds and he had been impressed how naturally they picked up a second language.

He said: "We are not going to have the skills we need until more young people learn French or Spanish or Chinese."